All sorts of excitement

So much to report on! Before I start though, the first picture is for Elena. There was a group that came to the house last week and did these paper bag puppets with the children as a craft. They had this frog, lion, and there was a lobster too. Very cute. The lion's mane was made with a circle with a slit in the middle so it would fit right over the end of the bag.

One night this week, we were served dinner by the wonderful people of Holland America.

Lilly liked making the chimes announce dinnertime!

The night before, she decorated her t-shirt with another wonderful group.

The Holland America people had a fishing-type activity, and part of Lilly's prize was some fake nails with bling. She had fun putting them on. Kind of hard to see it on the picture, but they looked good for a good hour or so...
Later that night, there was a dance class. Here's Maggie coming out of the tunnel.

Lilly was excited to show me that she tied her scarf just like her teacher.

Okay, for the exciting news....we're HOME for a couple days!!!!

Josh, Lilly, and Maggie were so excited to get to go visit their classes here for a few minutes. Everyone loved to see them, and the baby.

The baby's immunity is not good right now, but was just high enough for us to come home for a couple days before the next treatment phase starts.

Andy was really good at making sure no one touched the baby at the schools, and we left after only a couple minutes in each class.

I brought the new cell phones that had been delivered to the other house.

Daniel got right to work, taking pictures for Andy's phone. He was trying to get Penny to pose in the picture below.

my wonderful puppy dog

Since we are fed dinner by groups around 4-5 times each week, and it is hard to keep our food good for any length of time in the small refrigerators, I have stopped cooking for a while.

So, the nights when dinner isn't brought, we go out, hope Andy is there to cook for us, or just have something really simple.

So tonight, when it was time for dinner, I made the executive decision that it was Costco pizza night. We had to wait longer because they lost one of the pizzas we ordered, so the pepperoni was greasier and colder than normal, but we got to eat on a real, wood table in our own, real dining room!!! All the tables at the other house are restaurant-style fake, smooth surface.

I needed a way to encourage the younger children to get some exercise earlier in the week.

They wouldn't race when I wanted them to last week at the park. So, I went and bought some non-food prizes that were cheap (mostly poppers) that I knew they like.

They raced at the other house (downstairs), did push-ups, behaved when it would've been more of a struggle, swim raced, and had a jump rope contest.

They got to do the poppers tonight at our house.

Ahhh, see my "S?" I love my "S."

We watched "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs."

Kelly and Lilly were comfy together on one sofa.

Although, at one point in the evening, Kelly remarked that it felt like we had the cousins over because she got used to only having Daniel and Andy at home. My sister has 11 children, so we have a lot of excitement when we all get together.

Since we've been gone, the cat started using the end of the upstairs banister for a scratching post. It literally looks like someone took a sharp fork to it and just shredded. Bad kitty!